Clarina Howard was educated in Vermont public schools and for a year at an academy. From 1830 until 1843 she was married to Justin Carpenter, a Baptist preacher. She returned to her Vermont home in 1839 and the next year began writing for the Windham County Democrat of Brattleboro. She married the newspaper’s publisher, George W. Nichols, after her divorce was final, in 1843. From that year she was editor of the Democrat, and over the next few years she gradually broadened the paper’s range to include literary pieces and editorials in support of various reform movements. In 1847 a series of her editorials on the subject of married women’s property rights led directly to the passage of legislation by the Vermont legislature providing for such rights. In 1852 her campaign to secure the vote for women in district school elections failed to win the requisite legislation. From about 1850 Nichols was in increasing demand as a lecturer and debater, mainly on questions of women’s rights.

The Democrat ceased publication late in 1853. Her husband died in 1855, after which her family relocated to Wyandotte county, Kansas. There she contributed articles on women’s rights to the Lawrence Herald of Freedom and the Topeka Kansas Tribune. From 1859 Nichols traveled throughout the territory speaking on behalf of the newly founded Kansas Woman’s Rights Association. She lobbied the Wyandotte constitutional convention ceaselessly, and it was largely because of her efforts that the final state constitution granted to women equal rights to education, to custody of their children, and to the vote in local school matters. She also campaigned for a state married women’s property law (enacted in 1867).

In December 1863 Nichols moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked as a clerk in the Quartermaster’s Department until February 1865 and then became matron of a home operated in Georgetown by the National Association for the Relief of Destitute Colored Women and Children. In 1866 she returned to Kansas, and in the following year she joined Susan B. Anthony in the unsuccessful campaign to achieve full woman suffrage in the state.

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